


Taking The Liberty

by CartWrite



Series: Taking Some Liberties [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: And kind of naked, Aziraphale in Crowley's body, But very loving wanking, M/M, things get out of hand, wanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 21:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19281634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CartWrite/pseuds/CartWrite
Summary: After swapping bodies (but before their respective sides come for them), Aziraphale spends the night in Crowley's flat trying to figure out how to talk, walk, and be convincing as Crowley. Trouble is, he's such a convincing Crowley, he starts to convince himself to... well. Things get out of hand.





	Taking The Liberty

**Author's Note:**

> This is Aziraphale in Crowley's body, and he does not ask permission to do the things he does in Crowley's body. And so while I personally don't think Crowley would mind, you may have a different opinion and may want to skip this story. 
> 
> Also after utter failure at figuring out formatting footnotes, I just left the couple I had in parenthesis in the story. I hope you enjoy it regardless.

It was rather like a jug of milk.

You could pour the milk out of the jug. The milk could go into a carton or a bowl or a recipe for Tres Leches Cake. It wasn’t a part of the jug. But milk did experience existence in its particular jug. It became accustomed to it, developed a kinship with it. In fact, after six thousand years, the milk had quite come to depend on its stalwart, sturdy, and understatedly stylish jug.

So it was with bodies.

Poured out of one’s, say, stout blue cornflower-patterned ceramic jug and into a jug carved from polished obsidian with racing stripes etched on the sides – well, you would very well still be milk. But would you be the same sort of milk, after a while?

After a few hours in Crowley’s body, Aziraphale had his doubts.

Crowley’s body _slinked._ It _slithered._ Its hips _undulated_ like an exotic dancer’s.* (*Aziraphale’s opinions on exotic dancing had been informed entirely by the 1958 film _Heavenly Hula Rockadoo,_ which had been rather too full of bebop for his tastes. But he’d liked the grass skirts.)

Crowley’s spine swayed to and fro with every slinky, slithery step. If he held still for any length of time, it naturally leaned, like it couldn’t help itself but loiter. Given the opportunity, it would drape itself over furniture unsuitable for sitting in or on. It was angular and reedy and moved at a slant. Aziraphale had already fallen over twice.

Unfortunately, their continued existence hinged upon Aziraphale selling himself to Hell as the foul betrayer Crowley. That Hell would come for their wayward son wasn’t in question. Nor did he doubt Crowley’s ability to prove himself to the Heavenly Host. Crowley could lie like a 15th century Persian rug. But when pitchfork came to shove, would Aziraphale be convincing enough? He still wasn’t sure.

He knew Crowley, knew the way his friend moved and spoke, could sometimes predict what he would say next—especially when they’d both had a bottle of wine or two. But Aziraphale was an angel, Crowley was a demon, and he had no illusions about which of them had more practice when it came to subterfuge.

Still, he had sworn to try.

And so Aziraphale found himself in Crowley’s body and his sleek, black-tiled bathroom.

In the mirror, a pair of round black glasses stared back at him.

Aziraphale hadn’t realized he’d been wearing them. He grasped them by the sides and slid them off with the care of a bomb disposal unit handling a suspicious package.

The flat didn’t seem much brighter. But now yellow, black-slitted eyes appeared in the mirror.

Aziraphale had found Crowley’s eyes disconcerting, at first. But he’d become accustomed to them. Now, alone in Crowley’s body, he could study them as closely as he liked. They really were quite extraordinary, vividly colored and responsive to the slightest change in light. Aziraphale’s smile graced Crowley’s lips. But no, that wouldn’t do. He frowned and pouted and practiced silent sneers, recreating some of his favorites of Crowley’s. His lips curled and quivered just so. Such an expressive face. So many lines and contours, textures and curves, harsh edges and softer ones. So lovely.

His cheeks might’ve burned at the thought. Except that Crowley wouldn’t blush. Demons were well acquainted with shame and embarrassment, but not so much their own.  

Aziraphale sneered at himself in the mirror. “You’re a soft touch, angel.” Was the voice quite right? There could be no hesitation, no stammering. “Listen, angel,” Aziraphale tried again, leaning in close to the mirror’s surface. “You’ve got to get a grip on me.” That was better. More, he thought. “I’m A.J. Crowley.” Perhaps save the initials for the humans. Aziraphale backed up, cocked his hips to one side, leaned in the door jamb, and muttered, “The name’s Crowley. I dunno what you think you’re doing, but I expect you have a good explanation for it? Yeah?”

A little frisson of fear and excitement rushed through Aziraphale—er, Crowley’s body. That was just right, he thought, very good. Now if he could get the walk down. He turned. 

Something odd.

Aziraphale—er, Crowley—his, erm, nipples peaked. Before Aziraphale realized, reflex brought his fingertips up to them, two small nubs erect against the silky fabric of Crowley’s shirt. As he touched them, another shiver wracked his—Crowley’s—body.

“Goodness,” he whispered, in Crowley’s rasp.

Aziraphale abandoned the walking practice. He rushed across the flat into Crowley’s kitchen, where traitorously glass and metal-topped appliances revealed the reflection of a slinky, slithery, sinewy, slouchy, seductive figure. He opened the refrigerator door and winced at the brightness of its bulb.

He wished Crowley’s refrigerator held a nice, cold jug or bottle or carton of milk, so that he could make himself a milky tea, sit in a proper chair, and have a fortifying biscuit or three to steady his nerves before the Fallen came and whisked him away Hellward.

But not only were there no biscuits, there was no milk, either. Crowley’s cupboards might have been stocked by Hell itself. A jar of caviar with nothing resembling crackers available. Bananas both too green and too overripe to eat. Eggs, but from a mysterious animal.* (*Crocodile.**) (**For a brief period in the 1980s, Crowley had fancied keeping the company of a large, predatory animal like a puma or a tiger as a sort of personal mascot. Then he’d reckoned a crocodile would be a good deal more original. _Then_ he’d found out how big the buggers got, and had decided to save the eggs he’d sourced for breakfast. Except he never made himself breakfast. But nothing ever went bad in Crowley’s fridge.)

He closed the refrigerator door and took a deep breath. “Different jug,” Crowley’s voice croaked. Which—of course. It made complete sense.

Aziraphale, in his own body, had always enjoyed certain gastronomic earthly pleasures.  From your garden variety milky tea and biscuits to the finest wines and exotic tastes, he sampled and savored them all. Beyond that, he loved books of all types, all kinds of art, architecture, music, and watching others dance. He loved so many earthly things. 

Even certain… physical activities… of a frowned-upon nature.

Not that he did it frequently, or ever dreamed of involving some poor human wretch in his endeavors, oh no, Heavens no. But he had… explored himself. Mostly as a matter of learning. What sort of help could you be to people without at least metaphorically dipping a toe into something as intrinsic as sexuality, something that seemed to be both a source of rapturous ecstasy and abject misery? Or at least that’s what Aziraphale had told himself.

But it was one thing to learn that too much Vivaldi left one’s own body humming with physical pleasure, and quite another to discover that your best friend’s nipples were ON switches. Crowley’s trousers fit more tightly now than they had just moments ago, and they’d been demonically tight before.

“It makes sense,” Crowley’s voice said, cutting through Aziraphale’s jumble of thoughts. “I mean, it’s not as if self-abuse is frowned upon by my lot. Practically encouraged. Probably you can get a small medal for it. ‘Winner: Most Instances of Recreational Wanking.’”

Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled, but he caught himself nodding along. Having been given a rather sensitive, beautiful instrument, it made sense that Crowley would want to… play it. He’d probably become rather good at playing it. Like riding in Crowley’s Bentley, which raced from a standstill to just over the speed limit without much transition between, his body must’ve been used to going fast.

Aziraphale pictured some of the ways in which Crowley’s body might go fast.

“Oh, dear,” he said. He loosened his top button. A matter of habit. But the revelation of another inch of skin compelled him to unbutton another, and another, and to trace a fingertip from the soft hollow of Crowley’s throat down over his bared breastbone. “This is not…” said a voice that felt like his own, but sounded like Crowley’s.

Crowley, who enjoyed tempting him. _One more song,_ he’d suggest. _One more taste. One more glass._ And Aziraphale would turn him down.

Mostly.

“This is not happening,” Aziraphale said, in a voice more like his own. He paced Crowley’s empty flat, taking care to avoid the mysterious congealed mass and scorch marks in one of the doorways, and the gently trembling plants. As he paced, his hips jutted to one side, and Aziraphale discovered that if he counterbalanced with his shoulders, staying upright wasn’t difficult at all. He could do this. He would swagger and slouch, and ignore the way the silk shirt brushed Crowley’s nipples and sent an electric current of arousal straight to his uncomfortably confined erection.

Crowley dressed to the left, Aziraphale noted.

“I could really use a nice biscuit,” he whispered to the silent hallway. And really, if that’s what he wanted, there was no reason on Earth or in Heaven why Aziraphale couldn’t have turned around, gone back to the kitchen, or put on his jacket and headed out to the shops. No reason why he should instead step through the doorway to Crowley’s bedroom and stand in front of a King-sized mattress covered with satin sheets. “With chocolate. Or a bit of jam.”

“Why not both?” came out in Crowley’s voice. “Live a little, angel.”

Aziraphale slouched in the doorway. Crowley’s shirt hung half off of his body. Really it wouldn’t be too much more trouble to take it off, hang it up. Keep it from getting wrinkled, he thought. And might as well do the trousers, too.

“Just sensible,” he said, only realizing his mistake too late, after a certain fateful button had been unbuttoned, and Crowley’s too-tight trousers had practically unzipped themselves, as if grateful for this release of pressure.

You could be milk in any sort of jug, Aziraphale thought. But what if you happened to be poured into a jug made from six thousand years of concentrated temptation? Or what if you weren’t the sort of milk you’d thought you were in the first place?

“What if your metaphor is rubbish?” Crowley’s voice asked.

“Yes. That seems likely,” Aziraphale answered himself. He trembled. But Crowley, he realized, _wouldn’t._ Hell might throw any sort of torture at him. He needed to be ready. To relax. To be cool. Crowley’s level of cool.

Surely, faced with something as mundane as a little bare skin and soft, silken, near-frictionless sheets designed for pure sybaritic luxury, Crowley would sniff, shrug one shoulder and say, “Yeah, let’s get in a nap then.” He would take his time peeling off his my-goodness-these-are-tight-aren’t-they trousers, and even longer easing off constrictive black socks. Crowley might take the time to squeeze his long toes around tufts of plush carpeting, and to stretch his hands skyward in order to pop tight muscles in his lower back and neck. Then he would slither onto the bed, all loose, languid limbs, and feel how the sheets slid against every molecule of his sensitive skin.

Aziraphale gasped at the sensations. How could Crowley be cool when he felt this way? How could he possibly sleep? Of course neither he nor Crowley needed to sleep, but Crowley liked to. He’d told Aziraphale so on several occasions. Was that what he’d intended to do when he’d climbed into Crowley’s bed in Crowley’s body? He didn’t know anymore.

Everywhere, Crowley’s skin felt too warm. He turned onto his stomach, and groaned at the way his softer, paler skin there brushed against the sheets, and at how his—Crowley’s—erection pressed at the front of his rather short and tight black underpants.

“Hold on—just—a moment,” he whispered to the sheets, and to himself. He stilled with a great effort.

Crowley had traded his body for Aziraphale’s. But though no strict terms were discussed, the trade had been established to be of a temporary nature for the purpose of thwarting their respective employers. Thusly, joyrides were right out.

“Are they?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale held very still on the sheets. “Yes,” he hissed. It was easy to hiss, using Crowley’s voice.

“’Scuse me.” Crowley’s body slithered onto his back. He found a pillow, fluffed it, and propped up his head. “It’s just that in terms of hell-worthy trespasses, a wank is fairly far down on the totem pole.”

“It wouldn’t be a wank,” Aziraphale shot back.

“What else would it be?”

Aziraphale burned with emotion and sensation. Hellfire couldn’t have been hotter.

“…Angel.”

“It’s—it’s simply that I care a great deal for you. And—I know how protective you are about your car. Your body? I wouldn’t dare take the liberty,” Aziraphale insisted, nearly naked, very erect, and in Crowley’s bed.

“Mm.” Crowley sounded like he considered this. “Except if your little theory about how fast this body does go is true, wouldn’t you think I’d expect it? Do you think I’m puttering around in your bookshop right now _not_ eating your biscuits? When we get back—”

“If,” Aziraphale corrected.

“When we get back, there won’t be a biscuit left within a three-block radius. Little old ladies will open their biscuit tins and find them mysteriously empty. Tea time in the surrounding areas will be ruined. I’m going to enjoy the hell out of your appetite while I’ve got it, angel, and if you don’t think I won’t, well. I guess you don’t know me after all.”

Aziraphale had to hand it to himself; he made a very good Crowleyan argument. He thought of a dozen arguments for virtue he could use against it. But they all paled in the face of the real reason he needed to stop himself. “But if I touch you, I’ll know how it feels.”

Crowley had no answer to this.

Aziraphale drew in a breath. He folded his hands and rested them chastely on his bare stomach.

“Yeah, but like… don’t you really want to know?”

The tiniest brick fell from the wall of resolve he’d built. _Yes, please_ was the answer. But Aziraphale held firm. “I’m not going to have a ‘wank’ in your body, Crowley.”

“What if you weren’t wanking? What if you were, like, loving it instead?”

One of Crowley’s snakelike eyes snapped open of its own accord. “ _What._ ”

“Yeah, right, listen. What if you just—appreciated it. In a very intimate and pleasurable way?” Crowley’s body crossed one ankle over the other. “Not much different than getting a massage, really. Loosens you up. Gets the blood flowing. Great for relaxation. Which could come in handy, when it comes time for you to put on a show.”

Aziraphale clamped Crowley’s long, nimble fingers together as hard as he could.

“And what if a little personal massage makes the difference between you giving up the scheme and being able to hold it together? What if it makes you better at demonic impersonation? What if getting _in touch_ with me really helps you get _in touch_ with me—”

“You’re not here,” Aziraphale insisted, as his willpower crumbled.

“You’re right. I’m at your place, doing a perfect impression of you, and you’re here writhing around on my sheets being distracted instead of just taking matters in hand so you can focus on making sure we aren’t _snuffed out of existence_.”

Aziraphale trembled. Crowley’s body shivered in response. But it was a good sort of shiver, the kind that brought up goosebumps. “You know, I know what they say about good intentions.”

“Old aphorisms are the most fun to ignore.”

The angel relaxed his white-knuckled grip. _Relaxation,_ he thought, as he unlaced his fingers and traced the gentlest of lines across Crowley’s chest. _Appreciation_ , he thought, as the pad of his index finger worried one nipple, then its companion, and he stifled a moan at the shocks of pleasure that connected them to his cock.

For the briefest of moments, Aziraphale considered that he should aim for speed and efficiency. The agents of hell could show up at any time. It was just that it was currently very hard to care.

He twisted Crowley’s hips and tried to memorize the way the slick sheets felt against his thighs. A brief massage loosened the tight muscles of his neck. His earlobes were softer than Aziraphale had ever imagined them. Crowley’s tongue rasped sweetly against his fingertips, but then forked and wrapped around several digits.

Aziraphale imagined Crowley’s forked tongue on his own body. Bricks holding up walls he hadn’t even known existed split and cracked and tumbled down, and Aziraphale found himself imagining more Crowley could do to him and vice versa—terrible, wonderful things they could do together, a tangle of sordid and ecstatic. “Crowley,” he whispered.

He wished Crowley were actually here with him, then, wished he could lay himself bare next to his dearest in all of existence. Crowley’s voice had said _loving_ , but Aziraphale knew who’d actually spoken that word. His love wove through every caress, every touch. He couldn’t help it; or worse, he could, but he no longer wished to. Crowley’s body sang to him. Every hitch of breath and gasp spurred Aziraphale to recreate the sound with just the right stroke.

_One more taste,_ Crowley liked to tell him.

It was easy to slide Crowley’s just-as-silky underwear over his hips. Easy to run his hands through sparse trails of hair until they grasped Crowley’s cock. Easy to close his eyes and imagine Crowley begging him for _more, Angel, more._

Aziraphale would refuse him nothing. He reveled in just holding the weight of Crowley’s cock in his hands. The idea of taking it into his mouth, or inside him, caused bolts of desire to race through him like electricity. He opened his eyes and let himself look at Crowley’s naked body, his hard cock jutting up from his grip, proud and throbbing. It felt exquisite; Crowley felt exquisite; Aziraphale felt exquisite. If he’d been able, he might’ve lingered in that moment. But Crowley’s body started a rhythm, and Aziraphale followed.

“Oh my goodness,” he breathed. He rolled onto his side and pressed his face into one of Crowley’s pillows. “My goodness. Oh, my dear.” Crowley’s heart beat faster with every stroke of his hands, and even faster when Aziraphale rolled onto his stomach and let himself rub against one hand and the slick sheets. He felt so warm, like he might burst into flame. And maybe he would. Maybe no angel or mortal was ever supposed to feel like this, could ever stand it.

“Angel,” he rasped out, wanting to hear it from Crowley’s lips. But he wasn’t—he was—pleasure and desire and imagination and identity piled up together and Aziraphale couldn’t tell where he began and Crowley ended, all he knew was love; desperate, aching love and rushing heat that made his toes curl, his thighs tense, his fingers clutch. “My dear. My darling,” he cried, and the world exploded into brilliance, then darkness.

A feather hit him in the face.

Aziraphale, a good deal stickier than he’d been moments ago, opened his eyes to a puff of black feathers raining gently down on him. Some of them stuck where they landed.

“Hm?” he asked the flat. The wings were a puzzle. Crowley’s had either shown up of their own accord, or in response to what Aziraphale had done. But there didn’t seem to be any harm done. They’d only lost a few feathers. So he tucked Crowley’s wings away again, just as he had to do once every few hundred years with his own. He thought to clean up Crowley’s bedroom, or tried to, but the thing was… satin sheets showed off quite a lot of damp. Quite a lot.

“My goodness,” he whispered to Crowley’s body, half-chastising, half-praising. Then he said it once more, but this time only to himself.

What had he done?

He felt a pang of guilt. But it shrank in the shadow of the radiating warmth Aziraphale felt within him. He knew that feeling. It wrapped around him like a blanket, like a pair of wings. Its presence even stilled the anxious rustle of the houseplants.

Love.

He loved Crowley. Not like he loved humanity, or a crisp Autumn sunrise, or finding a rare first edition without even looking for it. Not like anything or anyone else in all of creation. And only now did Aziraphale realize there were ways to love him he’d never dared to consider. Ways that, now that he thought about it, Crowley might like to return.

“If we have the chance…” he told the silent flat. Aziraphale tilted Crowley’s chin. “When we have the chance,” he promised.

Hell would be coming. He’d better get ready.

Aziraphale snapped his fingers.


End file.
